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Florida sets record single-day total for new coronavirus casesReports that White House has been briefing against Dr FauciTrump retweets claim that CDC and doctors are lying about Covid-19Mueller breaks silence, condemns Trump for commuting Stone’s sentenceSign up to our First Thing newsletter 12.34pm BST Reuters are reporting that two experimental coronavirus vaccines, jointly developed by German biotech firm BioNTech and US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer have received ‘fast track’ designation from the Food and Drug Administration.The candidates, BNT162b1 and BNT162b2, are the most advanced of at least four vaccines being assessed by the companies in ongoing trials in the United States and Germany.Earlier this month, the companies said BNT162b1 showed potential against the virus and was found to be well tolerated in early-stage human trials. Early data from the German trial of BNT162b1 are expected to be released in July, the companies said. 12.25pm BST Donald Trump has retweeted a claim that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the media, the Democratic party, and “most” doctors are “lying” about Covid-19. Continue reading...

Cases rise by over 230,000 worldwide in 24 hours; Florida cases increase by record total for a US state; Brazil cases near 2mGlobal report: WHO reveals fresh record rise in cases worldwideImmunity to Covid-19 could be lost in months, UK study suggests30-year-old dies after attending ‘Covid party’ in TexasUK coronavirus updates – liveUS coronavirus updates – live 12.27pm BST With cases surging in Latin America, the continent on Monday had officially declared a total of 144,758 deaths, passing the 144,023 recorded in the United States and Canada. The region now stands second only to Europe, where 202,505 people have died. 12.05pm BST Boris Johnson has urged the public in England to wear masks in shops as an “extra insurance policy” against the coronavirus, and said the government would issue fresh guidance on the issue this week.The prime minister said the evidence “has been growing” on the effectiveness of wearing masks in public spaces, after coming under pressure to make the wearing of face coverings mandatory in England in line with the more stringent guidance in Scotland. Related: Boris Johnson says face masks should be worn in shops in England Continue reading...

Actor tells court he was left owing $100m in taxes after managers ‘stole my money’Johnny Depp has told the high court that he lost every cent of $650m he made at the height of his Pirates of the Caribbean fame and was left owing $100m in taxes on account of business managers he accused of stealing from him.On what is expected to be his final day of evidence in his libel case against the Sun, the actor denied he had been violent towards his former wife Amber Heard. Continue reading...

Exclusive: best analysis to date indicates significant increases in infections, hospital admissions and deathsCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageThere is “compelling” evidence that air pollution significantly increases coronavirus infections, hospital admissions and deaths, according to the most detailed and comprehensive analysis to date.The research indicates that a small, single-unit increase in people’s long-term exposure to pollution particles raises infections and admissions by about 10% and deaths by 15%. The study took into account more than 20 other factors, including average population density, age, household size, occupation and obesity. Continue reading...

UK refuses to intervene in case of men charged with killing police officerBahrain’s highest court has upheld the death penalty against two men charged with killing a policeman, despite international concern over confessions that rights groups say were extracted through torture.Pro-democracy activists Mohammed Ramadhan and Husain Moosa were arrested in 2014 after a policeman was killed in a bombing in a village north-east of the gulf island nation’s capital, Manama. Ten other people tried with them have also been jailed. Continue reading...

Tane Chatfield, 22, died at Tamworth Correctional Centre in September 2017 after being held on remand for two yearsAn inquest into the death of an Indigenous man in NSW custody has heard the young father may have had multiple seizures and was distressed to be separated from his cellmate on his last night in remand.Tane Chatfield died in September 2017 after being held on remand at Tamworth Correctional Centre for two years. Continue reading...

Schools closed and people told to stay indoors as search for man in combat gear continuesPolice in south-west Germany are searching for a man in combat gear armed with a bow and arrow, a knife and a handgun who held up four police officers and stole their weapons.Schools, nurseries and lidos in the town of Oppenau, in Baden-Württemberg, are to stay closed and residents have been advised to stay indoors as the search for the 31-year-old man entered its second day on Monday. Continue reading...

Republican senators among those hit by sanctions brought in response to US measures The Chinese government has announced sanctions against US officials, including the Republican senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, in response to US sanctions over Beijing’s treatment of ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang province.China’s ministry of foreign affairs spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, said the retaliatory sanctions would be in place from Monday, but gave no details on what they would entail. Continue reading...

About 17 patients are airlifted out of Imperial county every day, as the virus takes a devastating toll on Latino residentsIn southern California’s Imperial county, the chuff-chuff of spinning helicopter blades has become a familiar noise. It’s the sound of coronavirus patients being airlifted out – 15 to 17 a day, on average. This remote region along the US-Mexico border is under siege from Covid-19, and hospitals are stretched to the brink.Imperial county, population 181,000, is experiencing California’s worst outbreak, according to several public health metrics. Continue reading...

Latest updates: how has Covid-19 progressed where you live? Check the week-on-week changes across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern IrelandThe map shows local authorities where the number of cases has increased week-on-week and where it has fallen. Some of this is due to natural fluctuations, especially in areas where there are very few cases, and so a rise from 1 to 2 is a doubling. Increased testing also means that more cases may be being detected than previously, although the impact of this between one week and the next is likely to be slight. Continue reading...

‘Dramatic revelations’ expected from 200 exchanges between the Queen, her private secretary and governor generalThe imminent release of secret royal correspondence linked to the dismissal of prime minister Gough Whitlam will again call the role of the monarchy in modern Australia into question, experts say.Australia’s national archives will on Tuesday morning release the much-anticipated “palace letters”, a series of more than 200 exchanges between the Queen, her private secretary, Martin Charteris, and Sir John Kerr, Australia’s then-governor general, in the critical period leading up to Kerr’s hugely controversial dismissal of Gough Whitlam’s Labor government in November 1975. Continue reading...

With Germany at the EU helm, there’s a unique chance for Europe to fill the vacuum left by the retreating US With Trump’s US missing in action from the global stage, the European Union should be stepping into the vacuum. Germany, which has just taken over the bloc’s rotating presidency, could use the next six months to provide the leadership to boost Europe’s global impact. But is it ready to shake off its traditional reticence?Immediate economic challenges will dominate EU leaders’ first in-person encounter since the lockdown, on 17 and 18 July. And Berlin is right to prioritise agreement on the EU’s new seven-year budget and a pandemic recovery plan, a task complicated by internal rifts and new forecasts warning of an even deeper recession than expected across the 27-nation bloc. As Angela Merkel said in a recent Guardian interview: “For Europe to survive, its economy needs to survive.” Continue reading...

Duda has promised another term of backing legislative agenda of ruling populist party Andrzej Duda has won Poland’s presidential election, after results released on Monday morning gave the incumbent 51.2% of votes with almost all the ballots counted, the national electoral commission said.His Liberal challenger, Rafał Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw, trailed with 48.8%. Continue reading...

Thirty-three rivers break water level records as relief funds criticised as inadequateTorrential rains have continued to batter China, destroying homes and rendering millions of people homeless as residents fear they may be facing a repeat of floods that devastated the country more than 20 years ago.The country has raised its national emergency response to the second-highest level as water levels broke records not seen since 1998, when floods killed more than 3,000 people. Continue reading...

Covid-19 exposed the country’s reliance on ‘invisible workers’ enduring wretched conditions – and a new visa scheme has not addressed the problem Earlier this summer, as millions of Italians were locked down inside their homes, fruit and vegetables were left to rot in the fields despite the cost to the country’s economy.Italy’s informal refugee and migrant workforce, who had previously worked long hours in wretched conditions for paltry wages to bring produce off the fields, were absent from the farms. Continue reading...

Low priority for reproductive health during lockdown leaves millions unable to access contraception or safe terminationsSadhna Gupta* discovered she was pregnant just after India imposed a crippling lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19.The 21-year-old from the eastern Indian city of Bhubaneswar didn’t want to be pregnant. With no public transport available, clinics closed and Bhubaneswar at a standstill, she bought an abortion pill without consulting a doctor. While what she did was not unusual, Indian law requires a prescription for the pills from a licensed medical professional. Continue reading...

Photographer Max Miechowski explores the scenes and details of the communities of the British east coastA Big Fat Sky is a body of work exploring the shifting landscapes and unsung communities of the British east coast. Through contrasting images of beach scenes, resort details and industrial silhouettes, the work documents the subtle complexities of life at the country’s edge. Continue reading...

Travolta says ‘Kelly’s love and life will always be remembered’ after revealing actor’s death after two-year illnessKelly Preston – a life in picturesPeter Bradshaw on Kelly Preston: a classy actor who graduated from teen-movie roles to darker and funnier partsKelly Preston, who played dramatic and comic foil to actors ranging from Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire to Arnold Schwarzenegger in Twins, has died, her husband, John Travolta, said. She was 57.Travolta said in an Instagram post that his wife of 28 years, who was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago, died on Sunday. Continue reading...

Campaign group One, founded by U2 frontman, is calling for a reorganisation of aid spendingA development campaign group founded by Bono has accused the UK government of wasting a large chunk of its international aid budget and called for spending on overseas assistance to be cut by £1.6bn.In a report that echoes criticisms by some Conservative MPs, the U2 singer’s One campaign said there was too much spending on projects that failed to reduce poverty. Continue reading...

Vulture funds want to change Argentina’s debt structure. We need to stop them from setting a dangerous precedent In the wake of Covid-19, there is an urgent need for sovereign debt restructuring, including debt relief. In the circumstances caused by the pandemic, many countries’ repayment obligations could have devastating social consequences if they are not adjusted. Financial markets face risks of sovereign default.While some ad hoc relief has already been promised by official creditors, indebted poor countries are again facing private creditors without a sovereign-debt restructuring mechanism – the global equivalent of a bankruptcy regime. In the absence of such a framework, called for by the United Nations General Assembly and advocated by many experts and stakeholders, there have nevertheless been some constructive innovations in contractual approaches to sovereign debt. These address at least some of the collective-action problems of restructuring, including opportunistic holdout behaviour. Continue reading...

What kind of world will the coronavirus crisis leave us with? Interviewed for a Guardian Live event, the activist and author insists that the climate, equality and fairness must be at the heart of the post-pandemic recoveryKatharine Viner: Hello, Naomi. How are you finding lockdown?Naomi Klein: For those of us who were teaching our students by Zoom, as I was – home schooling, doing that juggle and figuring out how to bake – we had it really cushy. Now I am back in Canada for the summer with my family, in quarantine because in Canada, if you come from the US, you have to be in very strict quarantine. I have not left the house in almost two weeks. I am actually developing some phobias about leaving lockdown. Continue reading...

In the 1990s, a troupe of hippies spent two years sealed inside a dome called Biosphere 2. They ended up starving and gasping for breath. As a new documentary Spaceship Earth tells their story, we meet the ‘biospherians’It sounds like a sci-fi movie, or the weirdest series of Big Brother ever. Eight volunteers wearing snazzy red jumpsuits seal themselves into a hi-tech glasshouse that’s meant to perfectly replicate Earth’s ecosystems. They end up starving, gasping for air and at each other’s throats – while the world’s media looks on.But the Biosphere 2 experiment really did happen. Running from 1991 to 1993, it is remembered as a failure, if it is remembered at all – a hubristic, pseudo-scientific experiment that was never going to accomplish its mission. However, as the new documentary Spaceship Earth shows, the escapade is a cautionary tale, now that the outside world – Biosphere 1, if you prefer – is itself coming to resemble an apocalyptic sci-fi world. Looking back, it’s amazing that Biosphere 2 even happened at all, not least because the people behind it started out as a hippy theatre group. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Group of 83 wealthy individuals demands ‘immediate, substantial and permanent’ higher taxes ‘on people like us’A group of 83 of the world’s richest people have called on governments to permanently increase taxes on them and other members of the wealthy elite to help pay for the economic recovery from the Covid-19 crisis.The super-rich members, including Ben and Jerry’s ice cream co-founder Jerry Greenfield and Disney heir Abigail Disney, called on “our governments to raise taxes on people like us. Immediately. Substantially. Permanently”. Continue reading...

More than 20 people suffered minor injuries on Sunday after an explosion and fire on board a ship at a naval base in San Diego, military officials said. The blaze was reported shortly before 9am on USS Bonhomme Richard, said Mike Raney, a spokesman for the navy’s Pacific fleet. Four civilians and 17 sailors were taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries, Raney said. Continue reading...

Nancy Pelosi calls commutation a ‘threat to national security’Mueller breaks silence and condemns Trump for commuting sentenceSign up to our First Thing newsletterGlobal coronavirus liveblog: latest updates 6.28pm BST We mentioned House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s withering assessment of Donald Trump’s decision to commute the prison sentence of his former campaign adviser Roger Stone. Here are expanded quotes from her appearance on CNN’s State of the Union:“[The commutation] is staggering corruption. But I think it’s important for people to also know that it’s a threat to our natural security,” she said. “The whole impeachment process was about our national security. Why we are at the Supreme Court on these cases was to find out about the Russian connection. And we will continue to pursue that. This case was about the Russian connection. Related: Robert Mueller breaks his silence and condemns Trump for commuting Roger Stone's sentence 6.15pm BST Former FDA commissioner Dr Scott Gottlieb has appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation. Last week he predicted, correctly, that Covid-19 cases in the US would soon approach 60,000 a day. Host Margaret Brennan asks him how he thinks the outbreak will progress in the coming weeks.“New York really followed the pattern of Italy, where it was a sharp up, a huge epidemic, but it came down rapidly. I think in the south you’re likely to see an extended plateau,” he said. “We really don’t have a national approach here. What we have is state approaches that are creating regional effects. And so those regional effects are different. And the New York experience mirrored Italy. I think the southern experience is more likely to mirror Brazil, where you’re likely to see more of an extended plateau once we reach that apex. And you could reach the apex in the next two or three weeks.” Continue reading...

Infections are accelerating in largely untouched countries and those which hoped they had come through the worst. But there is hope“Most of the world sort of sat by and watched with almost a sense of detachment and bemusement,” said Helen Clark, appointed to investigate the World Health Organization’s handling of the pandemic. The former New Zealand prime minister was describing the early weeks of the outbreak, and the sense that coronavirus was a problem “over there”. The failure to recognise our interconnection created complacency even as the death toll rose.It took three months for the first million people to fall sick – but only a week to record the last million of the nearly 13 million cases now reported worldwide. As England emerges from lockdown at an unwary pace, Covid-19 is accelerating globally. The WHO has reported a record surge of a quarter of a million cases in a single day. The death toll is over half a million people and rising fast. Continue reading...

Rise is the biggest in any state since start of the pandemic as its daily average death toll continues to also riseFlorida shattered the national record Sunday for the largest single-day increase in positive coronavirus cases in any state since the beginning of the pandemic, adding more than 15,000 cases as its daily average death toll continued to also rise.According to state Department of Health statistics, 15,299 people tested positive, for a total of 269,811 cases, and 45 deaths were recorded. California had the previous record of daily positive cases 11,694, set on Wednesday. New York had 11,571 on 15 April. Continue reading...

Scottish first minister says she will not shy away from decision but UK nations need to work togetherCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageNicola Sturgeon has said she will not shy away from taking a decision to impose quarantine on English visitors to Scotland, but it is not a decision she would take lightly.Asked on the BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show about the possibility of self-isolation for visitors from south of the border, the first minister said the UK nations needed to work together on outbreak management in a way that mitigated “against having to put any border restrictions in place”. Continue reading...

The pope said he feels ‘deeply saddened’ by the decision of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to convert Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia from a museum back into a mosque. The Unesco-listed building was first constructed as a cathedral in the Christian Byzantine empire but was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453Pope Francis ‘very distressed’ over Hagia Sophia mosque move Continue reading...

The government has ordered a 27-acre site be transformed into a customs clearance centreIt is a competitive field when it comes to noise, but the sweet birdsong rising up from 27 acres of ragwort, overground grass and dense bramble hedgerows just about wins against the hum of traffic from the nearby M20 in Kent.But from Monday the victory for wildlife will end as the first machines and crews start work on a 27-acre Brexit customs clearance centre to process lorries coming from the EU into Dover from January, prompting anger from local residents, a Tory MP and other politicians. Continue reading...

Hundreds of thousands of Hongkongers queued to cast ballots over the weekend in an unofficial poll to select the strongest pro-democracy candidates, who will aim to seize control from pro-Beijing rivals for the first time. The vote might fall foul of the new national security law imposed by Beijing, according to senior Hong Kong officials. But residents visited 250 polling stations in what the Chinese-ruled city’s opposition camp says is a symbolic protest vote500,000 Hongkongers cast 'protest vote' against security lawChina passes controversial Hong Kong national security lawIs China pushing Hong Kong further away with its new security law? – video explainer Continue reading...

Thomas Chatterton Williams defends letter as critics say it disregards marginalised viewsThe organiser of an open letter decrying “a vogue for public shaming and ostracism” has said companies such as Netflix and the New York Times will have to take into account the views of its signatories, after a counter letter accused the first letter’s backers of failing to recognise those “silenced for generations”.A debate about free speech, privilege and the role of social media in public discourse continued over the weekend as the writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, who signed the first letter along with more than 150 prominent authors, thinkers and journalists including JK Rowling, Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood, argued that it had “moved the needle”. Continue reading...

Missile defence operators had failed to recalibrate their systems, Tehran saysA report from Iranian investigators on the shooting down in January of a Ukrainian jet has blamed a misaligned air defence system giving wrong information to its operators, who did not seek authorisation to fire before killing all 176 people onboard.Iranian officials initially blamed the crash of Ukrainian Airlines flight 752 near Tehran on the morning of 8 January on technical problems with the aircraft, but days later admitted their own missiles had mistakenly downed it. Continue reading...

Exclusive: discovery of two ancient mummies filmed for Channel 5 documentaryShe was the fabled queen of ancient Egypt, immortalised over thousands of years as a beautiful seductress. But, despite her fame, Cleopatra’s tomb is one of the great unsolved mysteries.Some believe she was buried in Alexandria, where she was born and ruled from her royal palace, a city decimated by the tsunami of 365AD. Others suggest her final resting place could be about 30 miles away, in the ancient temple of Taposiris Magna, built by her Ptolemaic ancestors on the Nile Delta. Continue reading...

Andrzej Duda faces Rafał Trzaskowski in runoff that will shape country’s political futureVoting is under way in Poland’s presidential runoff, which pits the populist incumbent, Andrzej Duda, against the liberal mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski. The outcome will have a huge bearing on the country’s future political trajectory, and polls suggest the result could go either way.Duda is allied to the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS), and a win for him will give PiS control of most of the levers of power for several more years, allowing it to continue an agenda that has eroded the rule of law and judicial independence, putting Poland on a collision course with the EU. Continue reading...

Folk singer, who also had a solo career, had a long-term illnessThe Fairport Convention singer Judy Dyble has died aged 71. The folk artist, who also had a solo career, had been suffering from a long-term illness. Dyble rose to prominence during the 1960s and performed on Fairport Convention songs including Time Will Show the Wiser. Continue reading...

Huge crowds of people have demonstrated in Tel Aviv against the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Unemployment has increased to 21% since the country went into partial lockdown in March and aid packages promised by the government have been slow to come through, frustrating Israelis who fear they are on the verge of financial collapse.In keeping with restrictions on public gatherings, police limited the number of people allowed into Tel Aviv's Rabin Square for the rally on Sunday as nearby streets filled with demonstrators wearing face masksCoronavirus live news: UK minister says people should return to work; Afghanistan death toll passes 1,000Global report: Tokyo hits Covid-19 high as Australia limits arrivals Continue reading...

Pontiff says his ‘thoughts go to Istanbul’ after decision to convert Byzantine-era monumentPope Francis has said he was “very distressed” over Turkey’s decision to convert the Byzantine-era monument Hagia Sophia back into a mosque.“My thoughts go to Istanbul. I’m thinking about Hagia Sophia. I am very distressed,” the pontiff said in the Vatican’s first reaction to a decision that has drawn international criticism. Continue reading...

In a powerful new book, the journalist and historian reveals how her former friends and colleagues became agents of populismAnne Applebaum can look at the wreck of democratic politics and understand it with a completeness few contemporary writers can match. When she asks who sent Britain into the unending Brexit crisis, or inflicted the Trump administration on America, or turned Poland and Hungary into one-party states, she does not need to search press cuttings. Her friends did it, she replies. Or, rather, her former friends. For if they are now embarrassed to have once known her, the feeling is reciprocated.Applebaum’s latest book, Twilight of Democracy: The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends, opens with a scene a novelist could steal. On 31 December 1999, Applebaum and her husband, Radosław Sikorski, a minister in Poland’s then centre-right government, threw a party. It was a Millennium Eve housewarming for a manor house in the western Poland they had helped rebuild from ruins. The company of Poles, Brits, Americans and Russians could say that they had rebuilt a ruined world. Unlike the bulk of the left of the age, they had stood up against the Soviet empire and played a part in the fall of a cruel and suffocating tyranny. They had supported free markets, free elections, the rule of law and democracies sticking together in the EU and Nato, because these causes – surely – were the best ways for nations to help their people lead better lives as they faced Russian and Chinese power, Islamism and climate change. Continue reading...

Boris Johnson’s chief adviser declines to explain reason for payments to FacultyA private company owned and controlled by Dominic Cummings paid more than a quarter of a million pounds to the artificial intelligence firm that worked on the Vote Leave campaign.The prime minister’s chief adviser is declining to explain the reason for the payments to Faculty, which were made in instalments over two years. Faculty also declined to say what they were for. Continue reading...

Tempers fray over social distancing and visitors from Lombardy tell of discriminationCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageTensions are breaking out on beaches and tourists from Lombardy have reported instances of discrimination as Italy’s first holiday season since the coronavirus outbreak gets under way.Residents of Codogno, in Lodi province, the first town in the country’s badly affected Lombardy region to be quarantined, have claimed attempts to book holidays elsewhere in Italy were rebuffed after they revealed they would be travelling from a former “red zone”. Continue reading...

Donald Trump wore a face mask in public for the first time during a visit to a military hospital on Saturday evening. 'When you’re in a hospital, especially … I think it’s expected to wear a mask,' the US president said as he left the White House in a helicopter to visit the Walter Reed national military medical centre in suburban Washington DC to meet wounded service members and healthcare providers caring for Covid-19 patients.Coronavirus cases have surged to record levels in the US, with guidelines recommending the wearing of face masks in certain circumstances to stop the spread of the virus Donald Trump wears mask in public for first time during Covid-19 pandemic Continue reading...

Nine cases have been added to the cluster in Casula and the contact dates have been widened to 3 to 10 JulyThousands of pub-goers have been asked to self-isolate for two weeks after a hotel staff member and three other people became the latest cases in an emerging coronavirus cluster.The 18-year-old staffer and a close contact in her 50s, plus a woman in her 40s and a Victorian man in his 20s, who both dined at the venue, were on Sunday confirmed as new cases linked to Sydney’s Crossroads Hotel cluster. Continue reading...

Latest updates: how has Covid-19 progressed where you live? Check the week-on-week changes across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern IrelandThe map shows local authorities where the number of cases has increased week-on-week and where it has fallen. Some of this is due to natural fluctuations, especially in areas where there are very few cases, and so a rise from 1 to 2 is a doubling. Increased testing also means that more cases may be being detected than previously, although the impact of this between one week and the next is likely to be slight. Continue reading...

This week’s emergency summit will expose national divisions over budgets and the €750bn pandemic fundCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageLockdown has proved challenging for most workplaces, and the European Council is no different. All-night sessions, corridor huddles and fine dining in the glass Europa building in Brussels have been replaced with hours staring at a gallery of fellow heads of state reading out prepared lines in front of a backdrop of EU and national flags – and the odd bit of pop art, as in the case of Luxembourg’s prime minister Xavier Bettel.But this week, leaders will be forced to switch off their laptops and make their way across recently reopened borders to Brussels for their first face-to-face meeting in five months – and it is set to be a bruising encounter. Continue reading...

Sites are near a beach where suspect Christian Brueckner’s camper van was photographed in 2007Portuguese authorities have searched wells as part of their investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, according to reports. The Mirror reported that police and divers in the Algarve region examined three disused wells in Vila do Bispo for eight hours on Thursday. Continue reading...

‘Molecular clamp’ jab from University of Queensland ‘ticked all the boxes’ in animal tests; Florida reopens Walt Disney World despite infection surge 5.05am BST In a grim harking back to March, Australia is once again seeing moody photographs of major cities devoid of people. 4.51am BST Analysts forecast China will be the only major economy to experience positive growth this year - partly because it was first to be hit by Covid-19 and therefore first to recover.According to a poll of analysts conducted by Agence France Presse, China returned to growth in the second quarter after the coronavirus pandemic handed the world’s second largest economy its first contraction in decades. Continue reading...

Chief executive slams ‘toxic behaviours’ as unacceptable after employees denounce predatory conduct, leading to resignationsThe second most powerful executive at French gaming company Ubisoft is among more senior staff to have left the firm as it pursues an internal investigation into sexual harassment allegations.Last month the company, one of the world’s largest video game publishers with a portfolio including Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry, launched a probe after allegations of sexual misconduct were shared online. Continue reading...

Daniel Andrews warns the next six weeks will not be an ‘ordinary winter’ as a man in his 70s dies of coronavirusThe Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews has warned residents to prepare for an extraordinary six winter weeks after the state announced another 273 coronavirus cases on Sunday.Andrews said schools in lockdown areas would remain closed to most students after revealing the latest case numbers, which represent another single-day high for the state. Continue reading...

Acting immigration minister says anyone who is a bad character or security concern would be returnedAlan Tudge has refused to guarantee that people from Hong Kong who fear persecution will not be sent back, explaining Australia decided to offer visa extensions and not safe haven visas in order to attract “serious talent”.The acting immigration minister made the comments on ABC’s Insiders, defending the decision to offer a five-year extension to Hong Kongers already in Australia which drew China’s ire and Labor criticism the plan did not live up to the government’s hype of offering safe haven. Continue reading...